


An Offer of Rawness

by deathwailart



Series: Dutchman AU [3]
Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, F/F, Flying Dutchman, Love Confessions, Magical Realism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-03
Updated: 2015-05-03
Packaged: 2018-03-28 21:17:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3870073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/deathwailart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes when you whisper to old possibly magical ships, they might just listen a bit too well and land you in it, as Mary discovers when Anne wants answers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Offer of Rawness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [evildoers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/evildoers/gifts).



Morning dawns, sky the colour of a bruise and damned if that isn't how Anne feels but she still musters her smile to see Thatch off. It's the sort of thing she took for granted until Mary was dying in a rotten cell next to her, too far to see, too far to reach no matter how she screamed at the guards and beat at the walls until her knuckles were raw, too far to hold Mary's hand and gather her close in the straw stained with the brackish brine of a birth her body wasn't ready for, the same as the blood on her own thighs when they took her to the boat and Edward staggered out looking like he'd been gutted. Angry as she is, _hurt_ as she is (the kind of hurt that gets tucked close to the heart and lungs, nestled between her ribs to be that catch in her breath, safe from the world, all the better to let it fester in a warm dark hot place, to let it scrape her raw), it's not Thatch's fault. So she smiles, lets him act like he's her mad old uncle only it sits sour in her stomach to think of it. She's older than Thatch. Doesn't look it and doesn't feel it the way she did before in her swollen knuckles, aching joints and rattling cough but she feels it. The shadow beneath a tongue that's sharp as it ever was, still sweet as honey, soaring like a lark.  
  
(Like a jackdaw and by God that's another sort of savage hurt then nearly brings her to her knees.)  
  
Thatch, bless him, doesn't try to sway her thoughts or apologise for Mary but his voice rumbles in her ear even so, rum and gunpowder laced scratch of his beard. "Hear her out, s'an unnatural business all this, no sense in denying it but hear that one out."  
  
She looks up to where Mary stands at the wheel, silhouetted against the grey cloud the sun is slow burn away, her eyes on the horizon but drawn to Anne because that's always been the way of them, pulled closer and closer until they came together and walked away with the other on their lips, beneath their nails, in their bones. The light behind her is too bright, Mary the shadow that she was in all the years without her when there wasn't even Edward, when it really was just her picking up the pieces with Mary's old friends dropping in and out of her life at odd moments because they'd loved Mary and they'd…well they'd helped Edward find his way at last and sometimes that was all you could do. Always out of reach, always the one Anne wanted to reach out for and she turns away, digs her fingers into wood and glares down at the sea, as though it will speak. It churns, grey as the sky, grey as the cloud and the rigging snaps with the crack of a whip behind her, eyes stinging, hair whipping at her face. She's always known when someone's watching her, a legacy of being a comely lass and learning to fight ( _you need to be aware, every moment, never drop your guard_ , Mary who was still James taught her, satisfied smile and wild kohl-lined eyes) but she doesn't move.  
  
She grits her teeth and the spray lashes, hits her face and she tastes the salt on her tongue as behind her there's a cry that has her turning, a tear in the sail, white torn in two and Mary's eyes are fixed on her. But Anne is still the best quartermaster a captain could ever hope to have and when she shouts the ship seems to lean in close and like she knows her own self, she knows that Mary's eyes are narrowed.  
  
They don't speak. She commands and Mary commands and the sky darkens and the rain begins, the crew miserable and soaked through and the deck seems to warp beneath Anne's feet. She loses her footing as she tries to make her way to Mary's side to get a vantage point, catching her hip and the ship _groans_ and she catches sailors crossing themselves, offering up prayers.  
  
"We strike something?" Mary calls, frantic and hoarse and Anne drags herself up, scrapes her palm on barnacles that weren't there a half hour ago and feels old aches this body had already forgotten.  
  
"What's there to hit? There's nothing for bloody miles Mary!" The steps seem to buckle and she wonders if she hit her head because the steps are there but not there, her bloodied hand clutching at the railings because she'd swear blind her foot just slipped through and she doesn't quite manage the cry of alarm that has Mary cursing and handing the wheel off to someone else, her hand around Mary's elbow.  
  
"Bugger the rest of it, there's things I should've told you, I never thought…I didn't mean for this, for _any_ of this-"  
  
Her attention wavers as she tries to pull her arm away and then the ship pitches and there's the sound of splintering wood, the heaving of the mast and when Anne turns it looks old, an old wreck fit to founder or to sink, warped from water, deck and mast sticking out like old bones, skeletons and bloated corpses covered in barnacles, in seaweed, crabs and worms scuttling and crawling. The mast hangs in tatters, drapes over the ship like a shroud and Mary's hand is just bloodied bones and her eyes are hollow pits.  
  
And Anne is as she was when Mary came to her at last after all those years and she is thankful she's being dragged down, down, down, into the hold, away from the chaos of the deck, trying to swallow past the bile in her throat. Her hands shake for the first time since she was young and she curls them into fists even as her cut palm stings.  
  
"Explain," she says, wanting to sound angry but she can hear the exhaustion in her own voice, waving away the rum Mary offers. It takes too long for Mary to speak, a swig and then another and another, mouth opening and closing before she actually manages to get a single word out.  
  
"I told this ship stories about you," Mary confesses because Anne might be lapsed and she might not have set foot in a church in such a long time (what did they do with her, was there anything to bury?) but she knows a confession in the way it crawls out of Mary's bones and reaches out, wants to be held and made real outside of her head. "I was…I was alone. Like there was some wound in me only you could make right. It spilled out, your wild red hair and the flowers you'd weave in it, how brave you were, how you always wanted to learn more and more, all the life in you. On the deck in the sun when the seas were calm and I could stretch out and out, as if I could reach you." A bitter laugh escapes her and this time Anne takes the bottle when offered, drinking until her lungs burn from the lack of air. "Stupid, right? Dead's dead and you had your life and I had…whatever this is. I don't rightly know but there was a ship and they called me captain and they heard me talking to the ship or maybe they heard the ship."  
  
"Is it like the things you and Edward and Ah Tabai would talk about?"  
  
"Maybe. Sometimes it's best not to question and I just wanted the sea and I had it. I was meant to have one day ashore every ten years and believe me, I wanted nothing more than to see you." She leans across, wind and salt weathered hands around Anne's own, eyes imploring but Anne keeps her face as blank as anyone can when they hear such things because she's lived and died and now she's lived again and she wants and needs this to be equal, to not be kept in the dark or to be hurt like she was, even if someone thinks they're doing right by her. She outlived them all, she's earned her answers.  
  
"So why didn't you? Christ Mary, they all died! Thatch and Jack! Edward went off with his family, Adewale with your lot; didn't you think I wanted someone there? Even once in ten years?" Cold water laps at her ankles, the ship strains and creaks again, leaning close and Mary squeezes her hands, rubs a thumb over her knuckles.  
  
"I meant for it to be better than before. I wanted everything we never had. I should've come, I'm sorry, believe me Annie," she swallows carefully and the water recedes as Anne sets the bottle down, rubbing at the just dried scrapes on her palm, "I never wanted to hurt you."  
  
She gets to her feet, lifting her skirts from the last inch or so of brine in the hold. "I believe you, I'm going to need time."  
  
Mary's smile is haunted, hurting but Anne's right and she nods. "S'one thing we've certainly got in abundance."  
  
The question still hangs as Anne makes her way to the steps, Mary still sat on an empty barrel, staring where Anne had sat across from her.  
  
"Tell me, was I so awful to see when you came for me when I was in my bed?" Her heart is in her mouth, a fluttering wild bird wanting to break free. She doesn't know what she wants to hear.  
  
"The most awful and wonderful you ever looked is the day you were snarling at that damned pompous arse reading off our list of charges and sentencing us."  
  
Mary doesn't see Anne's smile in the dark but that's fine because there's a smile as she heads up to the deck again, the sky still the colour of a bruise but bruises heal and time seems endless and at last they're both on equal footing.


End file.
